Food And Wine

06 DIC 2017
Published in:
Food And Wine

NEW YEAR’S EVE ... 5 EXCELLENT WINES TO WELCOME THE NEW YEAR

For the New Year celebrations, Italians are preparing for the ritual of the New Year's Eve toast. More than 80 million bottles of sparkling wines, prosecco and champagne will be opened during this event.

And so here, to celebrate the arrival of the New Year - or any other occasion falling on the 365 days of 2018 - are the very best bottles you can choose to uncork or give as gifts, made by the best manufacturers of not only Champagne but other products, because as lovers of all things “Made in Italy”, we’d like to talk to you about Italian sparkling wine.

Champagne or sparkling wine? Don’t worry about this insoluble dilemma - drink them all. Here are a few wines with which you can celebrate the beginning of the New Year. Each one, whether French or Italian, has its own distinctive character yet shares a common denominator: excellence. We have selected the best wines from all over the world for you to lay your table with on New Year’s Eve.

Our unmissable champagnes include Grand Cuvée by Krug: not a vintage specification, as is the case with the recently launched Krug Vintage 2003 Vivacité Solaire, but still the archetype of the excellent craftsmanship and savoir-faire of Krug, resulting from a blend of 120 wines aged ten or more years. A perfect mix that makes it one of the best champagnes in the world.

Applying the principles of the biological-dynamic method, the Alois Lageder Winery cultivates 50 hectares of vineyards owned by the family in South Tyrol. The holistic approach forms the basis of all our activities, of the relationships that have bound us for many years with various wine-making partners and also of our ambition to promote awareness surrounding a more natural, sustainable form of agriculture.

The "30 Years LÖWENGANG Chardonnay" is characterised by innovation, curiosity and, above all else, experience. This anniversary-edition Chardonnay expresses on the one hand thirty years of tradition, and on the other the desire to continue to grow by taking new paths.
The sandy, gravelly and highly calcareous soils of Magrè are ideal for growing Chardonnay. The "30 Years Löwengang Chardonnay" is a blend of vintages from 2013, 2014 and 2015. This means that an element of this wine has matured in barriques for a good three years.

Invented by the Italian wine company Saraceni Wines which is owned by the Tuscan family of the same name, it has a sweet and fruity taste, is fully “made in Italy” and has already won over millennials worldwide who have renamed it Siren Wine; it also has an alcohol content of only 7% and appears popular with those who do not drink wine. But what gives this wine its blue colour? Blue Curaçao, the world-famous blue liquor with its taste of bitter orange. The Prosecco Blumond is inspired by the blue diamond, and is composed of Prosecco, blue curacao and peach. It has recently arrived in China, where it is becoming popular at weddings, and in the United States, where sales have already exceeded $870,000 in 2016.

Broël & Kroff began as a single cuvée, wrapped in very precious cladding (the seal is made of solid 18K gold), produced only in magnum bottles limited to 2,000 pieces, intended to become the most exclusive in the world and produced by combining the best Pinot Noir (70%) and Chardonnay (30%) from the Aube. Each piece is hand-made to order. The preciousness of the new champagne is further testified by the five-piece cork stopper, the precious wooden box that houses the magnum and the refined dedicated bucket.

A toast with a sparkling wine containing gold dust undoubtedly produces a certain effect and confers a dignified character on a special occasion such as New Year's Eve. The "golden" sparkling wine, unique in Italy, is called L'Etoile and is produced by the Lombardy-based company La Rocchetta, from Villongo (Bergamo), on Lake Iseo. Created three years ago with the foreign market in mind, and in particular Russia, it has recently proved very successful in Italy too. The sparkling wine is created using the classic methods of the Chardonnay and Pinot Bianco vines, and flakes of culinary gold. About 5 thousand bottles are produced annually making it a rather exclusive wine, and the culinary gold is harmless and in fact is an antioxidant.